Road transport in Hertfordshire caused over £100 million in health costs in a single year, according to the county council's air quality strategy.

The county council's Healthier Air Strategy disclosed the figure from 2022 as it was presented to the environment, transport & growth committee on Thursday, June 11.

According to the strategy, transport and domestic wood burning are major contributors of fine particles in Hertfordshire.

The document states: "Significant growth is expected across Hertfordshire with 100,000 new homes and 100,000 new jobs created by the mid-2030s.

"It is important to strike a balance to ensure necessary growth is enabled whilst continuing to deliver better air quality to achieve the broadest health benefits for our communities."

The strategy sets out to improve air quality in Hertfordshire by meeting World Health Organisation (WHO) targets for nitrogen dioxide limits, as well as cutting traffic congestion, encouraging public transport and the uptake of walking and cycling, and promoting sustainable vehicles.

Another area of the report explores reducing indoor pollutants, such as gas cooking, smoking, candles and incense burners, chemical-laden goods such as air fresheners and personal beauty products, and household mould.

The strategy states that exposure to poor air quality can cause heart attacks, asthma, cancer and respiratory illness, as well as less direct links to dementia, diabetes and poorer outcomes for pregnancy.

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The document was presented to councillors by Matt Clark, the council's programme manager for air quality.

Mr Clark said: "The revised strategy creates stronger links to the health agenda and the research and evidence fields, including aligning ambitions to the World Health Organisation's guidelines on pollution thresholds.

"It highlights a continued need to focus on transport and the highway but it also notes there are other key important sources. That's why this strategy is proposed to become a stand-alone strategy rather than sitting as a supporting document to the local transport plan.

"It introduced more around the indoor environment and domestic environment as an important area for consideration, where people spend a lot of their time and where there are actually a lot of pollution sources."

Cllr Alistair Willoughby (Baldock and Letchworth East, Labour) praised the report and said: "It's an absolutely great piece of work and there's nothing in there that I didn't agree with.

"I'm really pleased to see the amount of mentions of anti-idling… We've obviously gone over this several times now, where we've talked about healthier air, and I've mentioned anti-idling every single time like a broken record. But it's clear that it really is a big issue for a lot of people."

Anti-idling is the practice of turning off a vehicle's engine when stationary to reduce fuel consumption and localised emissions.

Cllr Matt Fisher (St Albans Central, Green) said: "It's an excellent piece of work, clearly exemplary, and I'm really encouraged to see the focus on education and the involvement of children, and the upward management and the upward education that they offer to the culprits, that is, people driving in their cars…It's a great piece of work, and I fully support it."

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Cllr Ruth Brown (Royston East and Ermine, Lib Dem), vice-chair of the committee, added: "Likewise, thank you very much for your work on this, and it's a very important topic. The recent healthier air seminar that I attended was really, really good.

"I like the fact that this draws attention to indoor spaces, which are increasingly an issue. We tend to think of emissions from vehicles as being the worst pollutant, but there are obviously many other sources."